Maroo (YC S21) is a payments platform tailored to the events industry in the United States. We are bringing cutting-edge fintech tools into the previously overlooked vertical, offering modern invoicing and payments solutions, custom business workflow support, accounting, and tax integrations.
Most importantly, Maroo allows businesses to accept payments with no processing fees by seamlessly passing them onto the end client while providing them with flexibility of the preferred payment method.
We are Alexey, Anja and Andrei, and we are building Maroo, the smartest way to pay for your wedding.
There are ~2.1m weddings in the US every year. With an average all-in wedding cost of ~$40,000 it is no surprise that 74% of couples go into debt in order to pay for their wedding expenses. Moreover, the typical personal loan or corporate card rates range from 15%-35% APR.
At Maroo, we believe there is a better way to start your married life rather than going into a pile of credit debt. So we built a new payment method where couples can break their wedding expenses from 0% APR up to 24 months while wedding professionals receive their full contract amount within 1 business day and solve the problem of invoicing and collections.
We used to work at Revolut and The Knot and bring a unique blend of expertise that lands itself well to building a wedding fintech product! We have already helped a dozen couples to have the wedding they had in mind without overwhelming their bank accounts. We are building Maroo because we know we can make a real difference in the lives of millions of American couples as they navigate paying for their weddings.
Share your thoughts in the comments below 👇
@alexey_nikityuk“With an average all-in wedding cost of ~$40,000 it is no surprise that 74% of couples go into debt in order to pay for their wedding expenses. … At Maroo, we believe there is a better way to start your married life rather than going into a pile of credit debt.”
Yes, the “better way” is to not pay ~$40,000 to get married! Not to give people loans so they can impress relatives they don’t even like! I understand the appeal of making money off of people’s unreasonable desires but I don’t find it ethical to encourage this sort of spending.
@anna_0x Hi Anna! Thank you very much for your comment and our entire team is 100% on your side. We are not promoting consumerism at all. Even more, in most of cases, our credit limits are below couple's expectations because our credit assessment algorithm is NOT AIMED to offer the couple another $50,000 loan so they are not able to repay it back, and then charge 30% APR for the next 2 years, making the financial situation for the family even worse.
What we do is actually the opposite: we look at couples' financials, analyze how much they were able to comfortably save over the previous few months, and then we upfront their future cash flows to today, paying on their behalf to the vendors.
Because if you think about it, in the current environment, if a couple wants to splurge on their weddings, they still do so (as you pointed yourself). But without Maroo, they are facing 18-35% APR from credit card interest or people take personal loans.
Also, in addition to our product for all couples who used Maroo, we offer 12 free coaching sessions with Certified Financial Planners helping them to start their married life on a right foot, understand various tax implications of being a new family, what joint accounts are and how to operate with them, how to buy houses, etc.
Hope that helped to answer your concerns (which we 100% share on our end)
@alexey_nikityuk So cool to include sessions with CFPs, definitely see the value in that! Ultimately people want to include large groups of people and want the picturesque fancy wedding, so a change in the culture toward a more relaxed, inexpensive wedding doesn't seem to be on its way! Good to have an option in the meantime.
@ariel_wajnrajch thanks Ariel! Exactly as you said, our goal is to help young couple to start their married life on a right foot financially and we are doing this in a few ways one of which is interest-free installment plan on core wedding expenses and another is educational component as money-talk is super difficult, awkward and sensitive. We try to help couples to facilitate these conversations, and give some initial guidance so money will stop being a number 3 and 5 reason for divorces.
Hi, guys! Really interesting product! I wish I could use this when I married 7 years ago. Cool reason to marry my husband again or to celebrate our happiest marriage! Wish you success!
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